Data Speeds

If you're not one of the lucky ones to live in an area where Cingular offers 3G UMTS coverage, you'll be pleased to hear that Edge is nice and snappy on the 750. There's no significant waiting for the processor to render pages (at least, relative to other Smartphones) and data speeds tend to clock in about where you'd expect them for Edge: 100kb/s.

Fortunately, I headed out to Las Vegas today for the Consumer Electronics Show (which TreoCentral will be covering extensively, if you're wondering), where Cingular offers 3G data. I immediately loaded up Pocket Internet Explorer at the airport and tested my speeds here. I averaged around 300kb/s: very, very nice.

Odds and Ends

Push Email

There's always been a "good news/bad news" with the Treo when it comes to email. Rather than adopt a single platform for push email, Palm offers a smorgasbord of solutions: Exchange ActiveSync, Good Mobile Messaging, Blackberry connect (on some Treos), custom carrier solutions (such as Cingular's xpress mail), and good-old-fashioned "check it every X minutes" email.

This is a double-edged sword, in my opinion. Blackberries (Blackberrys? Blackberri?) and Sidekicks both have a single, integrated solution for push email, which while limiting does give them an advantage in simplicity and ease-of-use. "Simplicity and ease-of-use" is supposedly where Palm shines, so I'll admit I do wish Palm offered a similar service.

That said, once you do get a push-email solution, the 750 really shines. Not having to make Pocket Outlook check email on a regular basis is a boon to battery life (one question, Microsoft, why on earth do you set the maximum time between email checks at 60 minutes? How about once-a-day for non-vital email accounts?). I use 1and1.com for Exchange synchronization, they're one of several companies that offer full Exchange servers which you can set up to get your standard email. The upshot of which is my IMAP account is now a push-email Exchange account. The other benefit is that when I switch between WM5 phones (which has been happening quite a bit lately), I just need to enter my Exchange information into ActiveSync and within a matter of minutes my new phone has all of my email, contacts, and calendar information.

The Ideal Business Phone?

Palm is marketing the 750 as the ideal business phone. There's several good reasons for them to do that: the 750 works in darn-near every city on the face of the earth, gets data in quite of few of them, it's incredibly professional looking, and is, to be blunt, pricey. The phone sells for $399 with a 2-year contract and a mail-in rebate. Meaning the initial chunk-of-change you have to plunk down is considerably more. Cost for no-contract or 1-year contract is not yet available, but it will likely be the kind of stratospheric price to make any consumer blanch.

The lack of WiFi may hurt Palm with IT departments, but I hope not too much. For companies that already utilize the latest Exchange server for email and PIM, a Windows Mobile device is awfully compelling. And the feature-set of the 750 is definitely much better than Smartphone Edition devices (Palm is particular fond of pointing out that you can cut and paste on the 750, something you can't do on a Blackjack or a Q or whatnot).

Form-factor will be another big selling point for business users, I suspect. Compared to other full-PPC phones the 750 is positively tiny - set it next to an MDA or a Sprint 6700 and you'll see what I mean. Having been a Treo user for so long, it's easy for me to take this for granted. Moving from one-handed typing on a Treo to the wide expanse of the keyboards on the MDA or the 6700 is an exercise in frustration. Let's not even embarrass phones that make you use T9 or some monstrous combination of "push 2 and 3 at the same time" by naming them.

Another benefit is that Palm is now offering direct phone support with 90 days of purchase - no more dealing with tech support from clueless carrier reps. The 750 has so many capabilities, it's great that Palm is trying to make it as painless as possible for your average user to learn how to use them. If I know one thing about business executives, it's that they really can't stand hassles.

For consumers, the picture is much more mixed. There's no doubt that the 750 is pricey and that Windows Mobile is more powerful than the average consumer needs. The Treo 680 is a much better option, in my opinion. It's a pity that the 680 lacks high-speed data, but the Palm OS's ease of use helps salve that wound. Unless there is a compelling reason to get a Windows Mobile smartphone, I still recommend a Palm OS Treo to most folks (Note: "It's Windows so it will be more familiar" is not a compelling reason.)

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